Human
by D.K. Archer
Summary: Todd and Kurt slash. Kurt disappeared without a word to anyone. With his return years later, things are no longer the same. Ultimate Xmen tainted.


Human Rating: PG-13 Warnings: Contains SLASH between Todd/Kurt. This is a future!fic, in which the XMen Evolution universe is moving into the Ultimate Xmen Universe. Meaning Weapon X comes into play. yay.

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They had nothing at all in common anymore.

Kurt had new scars. Todd had a new name. They had both been rebaptized, in a way, and not through the workings of either Xavier or Magneto. 

Everyone called him Toad. Kurt had called him Todd. And he'd smiled when he'd done it, with a laugh, like he was surprised. Todd did look…different. Ten years time could do that to a person, especially with an X-gene in play. Todd had, according to his own standards if not Magneto's idealized ones, gotten worse. His skin had mottled and turned god awful shades; his pupils had begun to stretch, sideways, like a toads, and soon no one called him Todd anymore, not even Freddy. Though Freddy himself was now officially The Blob, at least, in the Savage Land.

And Kurt had just…gotten older. He'd grown up, filled out, become brilliant and lean and dark, and he'd gotten his ears pierced somewhere along the line. 

"You look like shit." Was what Todd said to him. And it was the first thing he'd said to him. Kurt had laughed, and it sounded wrong.

"I know." He smiled, shaking his head. "You're still with Magneto. I didn't expect that."

"Oh? And where the fuck have you been, huh? You wander off to join the priesthood, or something?"

Kurt stared at him, and for one surreal moment Todd thought maybe he was right.

"That was a joke, dawg…" Todd said warily.

"Ja, I know." Kurt said, and smiled again, but it didn't look quite right. It looked brittle. "Don't worry, I'm not a monk."

Todd, whose first reaction was to give a dirty comment, stumbled on it. He blinked at Kurt. After ten years, filth and innuendos weren't really his prerogative. He felt momentarily adrift. Ten years ago, he'd been angry. And ten years ago he'd been in love with Kurt Wager, or at least, as in love as a horny teenager could get (though it had taken him five years to admit that much.) He was sure Kurt had forgotten about it completely, though. They'd been stupid kids in a teapot tempest. Now that tempest had swallowed the world, and they weren't kids anymore.

"So where have you been?" Todd said.

Kurt shrugged. "Around."

Todd rolled his eyes. Figured. "And now you've come running back to the X-Geeks."

He hadn't called them that in ages.

Kurt tried to smile again. It didn't work. "Seemed like the logical place to go." He said, fidgeting his hands uncomfortably in the pockets of his sweatshirt. With the hood up, you almost didn't notice there was anything wrong with him. Except his eyes. His eyes were the same dangerous gold they had always been, but they seemed different now, sharpened, like knives. He could cut you with those eyes. He could make you bleed.

Todd scowled. "You could come with us." He said. "You still could."

Kurt shook his head slowly. "Knowing what you know, would YOU take that offer?" He looked at him. His eyes made Todd want to look away. "Would you join Magneto, after what you've seen?"

He couldn't answer that one. Todd looked down instead. The Savage Land, a place born out of comic books and b-grade science fiction movies; a place he was accepted because of what he was. And only because of that. It had been a long time since he'd felt human. Almost as long as Kurt had been gone. Funny, that feeling. He'd felt it most of his life, it seemed, long before he'd met Magneto.

"Yeah, well…." He said, looking for some response. "It's better than the alternatives, isn't it."

Kurt was quiet for a moment. "I suppose it is. Better than most."

The tone. The tone was wrong. Todd tried to catch it, and missed. 

He let it go.

"So you're back, then. You're just picking up right where you left off, huh?" he asked, realizing too late how that sounded. They were here, after all. Todd had seen him, in a fight that had nearly broken his leg. Todd had seen him across the battle lines and, miserable and aware of his stupidity, had gone to the only place he could think of; the stage in the park, at night, where Kurt had used to meet him when the sun had gone down and they could pretend they weren't enemies for a while. He hadn't expected Kurt to come too. Not really. They weren't kids anymore, and nothing was the same.

But here he was.

Kurt was looking past him. Vacantly, a sort of real, practiced emptiness Todd recognized from the mirror, from the place where nothing could hurt you anymore.

"I know better than to think that." Kurt said quietly, after a while. "I can't go back to the way things used to be. I left. I wanted…I wanted to SEE something. To find out the way things could really be. For myself. You know? I'd spent my whole life with other people telling me what to do and I wanted to see if I could make it on my own." The vacancy twinged. There was something going on behind that stare. "I guess….I guess the fact I came back tells you all you need to know, huh?"

"No." Todd said bluntly. Kurt hadn't just left. Kurt had vanished. He'd had to find out from Kitty what had happened, after two weeks of not seeing him, two weeks of being sick inside. Kurt hadn't had the guts to tell him he was going. It was a cowardice that was hard to forgive.

Kurt's eyes came back into focus. He looked at Todd. "….It doesn't, does it."

"No. It doesn't."

Kurt was quiet. After a moment he reached out and touched Todd's jaw, causing the man to recoil like he'd been burned. Kurt's hand hovered there.

"Ten years, dawg." Todd spat. "Ten fuckin years. And you didn't even have the balls to say goodbye to me, you didn't even tell me where the fuck you was goin. You prick. You got any idea what that does to a little shit like I was, huh? You got any idea what that feels like? You were the only person I ever felt like I mattered to, and you just up and walked away. You gotta lot of nerve coming back here, asshole." He sneered at him.

Kurt's hand lowered, slowly. "Yeah." He said slowly. "I'm an asshole. But you came to the park tonight hoping I'd show up, didn't you? You wanted to see me. You want to forgive me."

"Fuck you!"

Todd shoved him. Kurt's reaction was immediate and unplanned; he kicked Todd in the stomach, harder than he'd been expecting, much harder than he'd deserved. Todd fell and went off the side of the stage, the few short feet down to the ground, and hit the earth with a thud that made his teeth hurt. He curled onto his side, holding his stomach and trying not to be sick. He couldn't breathe.

Kurt peeked over the side of the stage, mouth pulled back in a grimace. "Todd?"

"G-go …to hell…" Todd wheezed, already trying to stand up. He hadn't deserved that. His legs were shakey and he braced on his hands and knees in the grass, ribs pulling unsuccessfully.

"Todd I am sorry, I am so sorry." Kurt said, hopping down off the stage easily and kneeling next to Todd, putting his hands on his back. "I didn't mean to, it just happened."

Yeah, it just happened. Todd shoved Kurt off but he came back, holding onto him too tightly. Kurt was afraid. He recognized it through the haze of rage and pain but it didn't affect either. So what if he was afraid. It didn't change anything. Not what he'd done back then and not what he'd just done now. Todd couldn't get a leg up to kick him off or he would have. Fuck him. Fuck him and everything he'd done, fuck him for what he'd done to that stupid teenaged boy, and fuck him for coming back.

"Look," he wheezed, when he could get the breath to. "Just go on back to that…fucking institute…and leave me alone. I think you've made your opinion pretty fucking clear…"

Kurt shook his head miserably. "Todd, it's not that, you just can't DO that to me anymore, you can't-- Todd, it was SHIELD, I'd barely been gone a week and they found me, Todd, they made me-- Todd, you CAN'T—"

"I don't care." Todd spat raggedly. "I don't care where you've been and I don't care why you left! It's been ten years and I don't fucking love you anymore, I don't even want to look at you anymore! So go back home to your mansion and leave me the hell alone, Kurt! You've done enough!"

Kurt stared at him, mouth open. Todd had admitted that he'd loved him once, more than he'd thought he'd ever do. And he'd told him he didn't anymore, which wasn't always true.

Kurt stood up slowly, leaving Todd on his knees in the dirt.

"I'll….I'll go." He said faintly. "But I'm coming back tomorrow. And the night after that. Until you talk to me, Todd, you have to at least give me that."

"I don't have to give you anything." Todd spat. "I don't owe you shit."

Kurt looked at him, lip twitching. "I'm coming back." He said quietly, firmly, and then he was gone in a snap of displaced air and burning brimstone Todd hadn't seen in years.

Todd started coughing, folding his arms over his stomach and dropping his forehead onto the grass. There was a cricket chirping in the bushed, blithely unaware of what was going on, and Todd wanted to kill the damned thing.

Eventually, one of his hands found the ledge of the stage and he pulled himself up, standing shakily on legs that could kick through a wall, legs that belonged to Mangeto. He managed to turn and limped away from the stage. 

He'd never see the damned place again. 


End file.
